Aggressive and angry parenting practices can have long-term repercussions for a child’s brain development, new research has found.
Repeatedly getting angry, hitting, shaking or yelling at children is linked with smaller brain structures in adolescence, which can have emotional and social impact later in life.
“The implications go beyond changes in the brain. I think what’s important is for parents and society to understand that the frequent use of harsh parenting practices can harm a child’s development,” says Sabrina Suffren, lead author of the study.
“We’re talking about their social and emotional development, as well as their brain development.”
This study is the first to try to identify the links between harsh parenting practices, children’s anxiety and the anatomy of their brains.
Previous studies have already shown that children who have experienced severe abuse – such as sexual, emotional and physical abuse – have smaller prefrontal cortexes and amygdala, two structures that play a key role in emotional regulation and the emergence of anxiety and depression, which can become more extreme later in life.
In this study – from Université de Montréal and the CHU Sainte Justine Research Centre, in partnership with researchers from Stanford University – researchers observed that the same brain regions were smaller in adolescents who had repeatedly been subjected to ‘harsh parenting’ practices in childhood, even though the children did not experience more serious acts of abuse.
“These findings are both significant and new,” says Ms Suffren.
“It’s the first time that harsh parenting practices that fall short of serious abuse have been linked to decreased brain structure size, similar to what we see in victims of serious acts of abuse.”
She adds that a study published in 2019 “showed that harsh parenting practices could cause changes in brain function among children, but now we know that they also affect the very structure of children’s brains”.
The study used data from children who had been monitored since birth at CHU Saint-Justine in the early 2000s by Université de Montréal’s Research Unit on Children’s Psychosocial Maladjustment (GRIP) and the Quebec Statistical Institute.
As part of this monitoring, parenting practices and child anxiety levels were evaluated annually while the children were between the ages of two and nine.
This data was then used to divide the children into groups based on their exposure – low or high – to persistently harsh parenting practices.
“Keep in mind that these children were constantly subjected to harsh parenting practices between the ages of two and nine,” says Ms Suffren.
“This means that differences in their brains are linked to repetitive exposure to harsh parenting practices during childhood,” said Suffren who worked with her colleagues to assess the children’s anxiety levels and perform anatomical MRIs on them between the ages of 12 and 16.
